18/08/2018
NEWS STORY
In its bid to claim 'best of the rest' title, Renault is taking a number of bodywork upgrades to Belgium next weekend.
"We have a new floor and some other bodywork parts to go with that, which should be helpful," reveals the team's technical director Nick Chester.
"We're in a super tight battle in the midfield," he admits. "We have to put more performance on the car to have a good fight until the end of the year, but our target is to retain fourth place.
141 points adrift of third-placed Red Bull, Renault is just 16 ahead of Haas, with Force India and McLaren both within thirty points.
"We're being pushed quite hard and we have a lot of work to do," admits Chester. "We can do it, we have a 16-point gap, but one good race can wipe that out, as we saw in Austria.
"The goal is to out-qualify our rivals as that makes things easier, but if we don't, and if we're close, we tend to race well. The objective is to find raw car pace but, as long as we're close, we're confident we can out-race our rivals."
In addition to the floor and bodywork parts, team boss Cyril Abiteboul admits that other "concepts" aimed at this season and 2019 will be tried at Spa and the coming races.
"Most of our resources are now focused in preparing for 2019, which is another important step in the team's progress," says the Frenchman. "Before that, we have to keep bringing developments to this year's package to find gains wherever possible.
"We are pushing on with aero developments, and will bring some concepts at upcoming races onto the R.S.18 that are ultimately destined for next year's car. We've been offensive and decisive in the driver market and now we have to do the same on both chassis and engine development."